1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus and an imaging method that are capable of shooting a still image, and also of shooting a movie before and/or after still image shooting (including a series of images acquired by continuous shooting of still images).
2. Description of the Related Art
It has become possible in recent years to easily shoot movies, but within a movie that has been taken there are also operational errors and erroneous imaging, as well as images that are not in line with the photographer's intention. The photographer therefore performs editing of the movie after movie shooting. However, searching for these images from within the movie, and editing, requires time to playback the movie and is also complicated.
A movie editing device that detects, in image data that has already been stored, sections that have a high possibility of being deleted or amended at the time of editing by movie analysis, and displays that information at the time of editing together with image data, has therefore been proposed in Japanese patent laid open No. 2005-167377 hereafter referred to as “patent publication 1”). This movie editing device obtains luminance distribution, luminance differential value distribution, motion vector distribution etc. for every frame, calculates an evaluation value for respective determination items for determining “sharp and vivid”, “slight movement”, “slight change in movement”, “not too light or not too dark”, “not too many blown out highlights or black shadows” etc., and detects NG frames for which this evaluation value does not satisfy a threshold value. Sections in which NG frames are continuous are then made NG candidate sections, and NG candidate sections that have been detected for every determination item are displayed together with the movie on a time axis of a GUI.
In this way, the movie editing device disclosed in patent publication 1 automatically detects images resulting from general operation errors and erroneous shooting, and displays this image as an NG candidate which simplifies movie editing. However, the level of operation error or erroneous shooting will differ depending on the photographer, and further, personal preference will differ even within images in which there are no operation errors or erroneous shooting. This is because compositional preference, exposure conditions, etc., differ depending on the photographer. This means that with the movie editing device disclosed in patent publication 1, performing editing of a movie in line with the photographer's intention is insufficient.
Also, in recent years, it has also become easy, together with performing still image shooting, to shoot many still images using rapid shooting etc. before and after the still image shooting. Even if it is possible to locate a photographer's favorite images from among still images of a number of frames, it is not easy to locate the photographer's favorite images from among a great number of the still images. This means that with the movie editing device disclosed in patent publication 1 it is difficult to locate movies and still images in accordance with the photographer's preference.